The Upanishad1 has given us a command: ‘Follow truth, and study and
teach. Practise peace of mind, control of thought, and study and
teach. Master the senses, and study and teach. Honour and serve the
guest, and study and teach.’ Along with the doing of all these
duties goes the study and the teaching. The scriptures themselves
use the image of a casket, in which all human duties are contained
(like peas in a pod) between the encapsulating walls of the study
and the teaching of the sacred books. Every duty should be carried
out within this enclosing casket. For myself the command means:
‘Appeal for gifts of land, and gifts of villages—and study and
teach. Build up a Shanti-sena and study and teach. Work for
village-oriented khadi and study and teach.’ That is what I have
been doing. The duty of study and of teaching has never been far
from my mind, and I owe much to those great souls who commanded me
to follow this principle.
I have been a student all my life; I have never ceased to be one. A
man who has a taste for study can never give it up; he must seek
knowledge of many kinds—spiritual knowledge, scientific knowledge,
knowledge of the principles of health, of medicine and so on. That
was my aim; I studied as wholeheartedly as any university student,
and went on studying all through my bhoodan and gramdan pilgrimages.
Teaching is itself one form of study, and I have been teaching
without a break since 1911. Educating the people is also a kind of
teaching. For fourteen or fifteen years I gave public speeches; I
must have spoken at least three times each day, which add up to
around fourteen thousand speeches.

Three Stages

My education began, after a fashion, at Gagode in 1901, but most of
it was acquired during the eleven years I spent at Baroda. During
that period I read literally thousands of books. I became acquainted
with six languages, Marathi, Sanskrit, Hindi, Gujarati, English and
French, and read some of the greatest literature in each of them.
During that time I read the Ramayana of Tulsidas in the original
(Hindi) and in the Marathi translation. I read the great writers of
Gujarat, including Narasinh Mehta and Akha Bhagat. In French I read
Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’; in English poets such as Milton,
Wordsworth and Browning made a great impression on me. I did not
know much Sanskrit but I read the Gita. At that time, however, it
was the books of the Marathi saints which influenced me most. That
was only natural, since Marathi was my mother tongue, and no great
effort was needed. I got by heart thousands of the spiritual hymns
of Jnanadev, Namadev, Tukaram, Ekanath and Ramadas—about ten
thousand verses, all told, from the five of them.
My mother died two years after I had left home to seek spiritual
knowledge; I was with her at the time. I remembered a verse in
Jnaneshwari2: ‘No mother can equal the sacred Veda in its power to
wean the heart from evil and prompt it towards the good.’ So, that
very day, I began to study the Vedas. That was in 1918; I continued
it till 1969. During those fifty years I studied the Vedas, the
Upanishads and the other Sanskrit spiritual books—I do not think
that I missed out a single one. I read the Ramayana, the
Mahabharata, the Bhagavata, the Yogavasishtha, the Yoga-sutra,
Brahma-sutra and Sankhya-sutra. Then I read the commentaries, twenty
in Sanskrit, thirteen others, thirty-three in all. In this way I
read a great deal of spiritual and religious literature. Not that I
made a complete study of every book. There were some that I studied
thoroughly, some that I committed to memory, but others I read in a
more cursory fashion. I regard the Vedas, however, as the
quintessence of them all.
Now, in 1975, I am an old man, and in my old age, following the
bidding of Shankaracharya, I take refuge in two books, the Gita and
the Vishnusahasranama. Day and night, waking or sleeping, the
Sahasranama, the Thousand Names of the Lord Vishnu, are always with
me.
Thus, in the first stage of life, came the influence of the five
(Marathi) saints; in the second stage the main influence was that of
the Vedas; in the third stage the greatest influence is that of the
Vishnusahasranama. What lies ahead must surely be freedom from all
books whatsoever !

A Panoramic View

When I was a boy I read the monthly magazines, but I would skip the
stories and poems, glance casually over the essays, and give all my
attention to the historical material, the biographies, the
scientific articles and such like.
I read every one of the biographies to be found in the library at
Baroda. I began at the letter A, with the life of Abdul Rahman. It
gave a good account of the efforts of the Afghan people to keep
their independence. Then came B, and a life of Buddha, which dealt
with the eighty years of his life in eighty chapters.
I used to read through big volumes in ten or fifteen minutes. In
1936 when I was in Faizpur, Pandit Nehru’s Autobiography came out,
and I glanced through it for ten or fifteen minutes. In one place he
writes: ‘I got married and we went to Kashmir. There was famine
there, and poverty....’ and then he starts describing the poverty of
India. Nothing about his marriage except those three words, ‘I got
married’; all the rest about other things. ‘This man,’ I
thought,’has the power of detachment !’
In Sanskrit I read no romances, poetry or plays, except only
Uttara-Ramacharitam. I did not read Shakuntala, and only two
chapters of Raghuvansha. I did not even read the whole of Valmiki’s
Ramayana. I had begun teaching some- one and in that connection I
read four or five chapters. The demons, Mareecha and Subahu are
described as brave and well-educated, and that much stuck in my
mind—well-educated demons ! The Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and
the Brahma-sutra were what I studied thoroughly.
My friend Raghunath Dhotre used to read Marathi poetry and plays. He
read them aloud to me, with dramatic gestures. He gave me a play
called Keechakavadha to read, and I read it, but that was all. Sane
Guruji gave me his book Patri, in which he had marked some ten or
twelve poems. I read those poems, and later I looked through the
whole book, but I did not read his other well-known book ‘Shyamchi
Aai’ (Shyam’s Mother).
I read only one of Shakespear’s plays, and that was ‘Julius Caesar’,
which happened to be a prescribed book at school. On the first page
was a list of characters and their relationships. I kept my finger
in that page as I read on, and when a new character appeared I
checked him up—otherwise how was I to remember which was which?
Another prescribed book was Scott’s Ivanhoe. Three or four pages
would be taken up in describing just one man. ‘Why read all that?’ I
asked, only to be told, ‘Because it is in the syllabus.’ So I left
it alone.
Tolstoy was a great man, each of his novels runs to a thousand
pages. I took up ‘War and Peace’, read the beginning and the end,
and put it down. But I read the Twenty-three Tales in full. Tolstoy
himself says: ‘These books of mine which people buy are of no real
value. My short stories are my best work, and the first story, God
sees the Truth, but Waits, is the best of all. I too liked that
story very much.
I read Premchand’s play Karbala. It is in Nagari script but uses
Urdu words, and I read it to familiarise myself with those words. I
used to look through Punjabi readers also for the sake of the Urdu
vocabulary.
I read the whole of the Concise Oxford Dictionary—who else would do
such a thing? I also read the Sanskrit dictionary Girvana Laghu
Kosha, and a Tamil dictionary too. I studied ten or twelve books on
English grammar.

The Study of the Gita

During my boyhood, Saint Jnaneshwar gave me a sense of reverence for
the Gita. I was then about eight years old, and there was a copy of
Jnaneshwari in the house. I took it up and read the first chapter.
There was a tremendous description of imminent war—the conches blew,
the earth trembled, the stars rained down from heaven like flowers
of the Parijat tree.3 It seemed that universal destruction was at
hand, and fearful warfare. Now, I thought happily, there will be
something really worth while. But when I read on I was bitterly
disappo- inted—the wretched Arjuna had cooled off ! Then in the
second chapter the Lord rebuked him, rebuked him so severely that my
hopes began to revive; now, I thought, the battle will begin ! But
what followed was an exposition of philosophy; it was too deep for
me, I gave it up. This was my first introduction to the Gita, and I
got the impression that there is no battle in it at all.
Then in High school I began to study Marathi litera- ture. At that
time I got as far as Jnaneshwari and read the whole of it. I read it
as literature, but it made such an indelible impression on my mind
that I decided to come back to it later when I could understand it
properly.
Saint Jnaneshwar had taught me to revere the Gita; Lokamanya
Tilak’s4 Gita-rahasya (The Secret of the Gita) taught me to regard
the study of it as essential. That was probably about 1912. I heard
that Tilak had written the book in jail. I did not know Sanskrit
then, but it was necessary to understand the Gita in order to
understand Gita-rahasya, and so I began to study it. It took me
thirty-two hours to read Lokamanya’s Gita-rahasya, doing twenty-five
pages an hour. I borrowed it from the library one Saturday evening
and returned it on Monday morning.
My study of Gita-rahasya aroused a desire to go further, and to do
some thinking on my own account, for some of the ideas which
Lokamanya had put forward appealed to me, while others did not. My
explorations therefore were of two kinds. On the one hand I
reflected on the nature and meaning of life; on the other hand I
acquainted myself with the ideas which had preceded and followed the
Gita, its context of thought. It was easy enough to discover what
followed, I had only to read the commentaries. It was a much more
difficult task to study the currents of thought that had preceded
it. But I had such a strong urge to do it that the difficulties were
overcome, I did it. In the end it took me back to the Vedas, with
their obscure language and archaic words, the language of a time
when words themselves were being formed, so that I was driven right
back to their root meanings. All this took a long time, but was well
worth the labour, and as a result of all this study my faith in the
Gita was fully confirmed. Then, so far as the life of a karmayogi
would allow, I reflected on the various religions, in order to
understand them and compare them with the Gita. It was a marvellous
panorama that opened before my eyes.

Ramayana and Bhagavata

From earliest childhood I have been listening to the recital of the
Ramayana in my own home. There must have been very few days that
passed without it. As I read and listened, it never occurred to me
that this was something that had actually happened in history, or
that there really had been a man named Ravana. I had never read of
any ten-headed man in any of my history books, so that a book which
speaks of such a man can never be regarded as history. Nor did I
ever imagine that there was really a Dravidian named Kumbhakarna.
Even as a child I understood, and was taught, that this was a war
between the demons and the gods, a war that is being fought all the
time within our own hearts. Ravana is the image of our demonic
pride, Kumbhakarna the image of our sloth, Bibhishana the image of
our better selves.
Can one imagine any devotee in the whole of India whose mind has
never been captured, charmed, comforted and calmed by the Bhagavata?
From Kerala to Kashmir, Kashmir to Kamarup, within this whole
triangle there is no one who can escape the Bhagavata. And where no
one can escape, how could I? I had to look at it, if only for my
comparative study of the Gita. Saint Ekanatha made me read the
eleventh chapter over and over again, and I must admit that while
the Gita was my nourishing milk, the Bhagavata was the honey that
sweetened it.

Regard for all Religions

In 1949, for the first time, I made a thorough study of the Koran
Sharif. Before that I had read the English translation by Pickthall
and Yusuf Ali’s commentary. Then when I entered Kashmir during my
bhoodan pilgrimage I looked into the translation produced by the
Ahmadiya community. After reading Pickthall’s English translation I
began to study the Arabic. I would make out the words one by one,
but it was difficult to remember, and it was also a strain on my
eyes, so I wrote out the whole thing in Nagari script and then I
remembered it. Arabic seems to me to be easier than Urdu. Every
Friday the Koran was recited on the radio for twenty minutes. I was
in jail, and was able to listen regularly, and so to catch the
correct pronunciation. Since 1949 I have been reading the Koran
regularly.
While I was a student in High School, the Bible, the New Testament,
came into my hands and I read it through. Later in connection with
my study of religions, I read all the translations of the New
Testament I could get. In 1955 when I was on tour in West Bengal
some Christian men and women came to meet me and gave me a copy of
the Bible, and I resumed my study of it that very day. I kept it up,
and later when I reached Kerala the Bishops of the various churches
came to visit me. They were pleased to see my Bible, with my
markings and notes in it. They prayed according to their own custom,
and blessed the bhoodan work, with which they showed much sympathy.
Then in 1959 when I crossed the Pir Panjal to the Kashmir valley, we
passed by a Christian mission. An old lady of eighty-five was
standing ready to welcome us. I asked her if she had Schofield’s
Reference Bible, and she immediately went in and fetched her own
copy to give me. In this way I was able to get various books quite
easily, and I studied them in depth.
While I was still a boy, the Dhammapada came my way in a Marathi
prose translation. Some years later I read some of it in the
original Pali.5 I was engrossed in the Gita in those days, but
nevertheless some sentences in the Dhammapada influenced me so much
that in ‘Sthitaprajna Darshan’,6 I attempted to point out the
relationship between the ultimate aims of Vedanta and Buddhist
philosophy. It seemed to me that the Dhammapada was a kind of bridge
between the teachings of saints like Namdeva and Kabir on the one
hand, and those of the Upanishads and the Gita on the other, and I
studied it very deeply from that point of view.
I first got a copy of the Granthsaheb,7 printed in Nagari script, by
the kindness of the Shiromani Gurudwara Committee. I read it through
from beginning to end. From then on, the recital of the Japuji
formed part of our morning prayer, so that we might study and
experience the devotional practice of the Sikhs. I wanted to make a
collection of Namadev’s hymns. Nearly all of them are in Marathi,
but there are a few in Hindustani also. I read through the
Granthsaheb again, to look for them and make my choice, and in this
way I got to know Guru Nanak and took him to my heart.

In the Company of Saints

In Hindi my studies have been chiefly of Tulsidas and Nanak, and
while I made a thorough study of Tulsidas I paid less attention to
Nanak, and of the rest I read only what happened to come my way.
Beejak, Kabir’s famous book, I read in 1918. How much I understood
of it then, at the age of twenty-three, I do not know. But I got the
impression that Kabir’s thought was very much like the thought which
Saint Jnaneshwar voiced in his Amrita- nubhava (‘The Experience of
the nectar’), and that Kabir owed something of his thinking to the
Nirgunia and Sahajiya sects.8
At Sabarmati Ashram I had my first opportunity to see Tulsidas’
Vinaya-Patrika. In those days, at the assembly for prayer, Pandit
(Vishnu) Khare Shastri used to introduce the Ashram inmates to the
writings of the saints, including some of the hymns of the
Vinaya-Patrika. As a result I read the whole book three times over
between 1918 and 1921, giving it my fullest attention. After that it
lay in cold storage in my heart for the next seven or eight years.
Then, a few years later, Balkoba9 started teaching music to the
students of the Wardha Ashram, and taught them some new hymns from
it. That made me pick up the Vinaya-Patrika and read it again, and
for the next three years or so I was completely absorbed in it. I
don’t remember how often I read it during that time, but I knew a
good deal of it by heart. Then it went into cold storage for another
sixteen years. Later, after Bapu’s death, I went to work for the
re-settlement of the refugees,10 and the only book I took with me
was the Vinaya-Patrika. I taught some of its most profound and
meaningful hymns to Mahadevi, who was accompanying me, and during
the next three years I pondered much over them. Thirteen years
later, during my bhoodan pilgrimage, the little children of a
village school in Madhya Pradesh presented a copy of the book to me,
and once more I began to study it.
I must have been about fifteen years old when the Nirnayasagar Press
brought out a beautiful edition of the Bhagavata of Ekanath. I got
hold of a copy. When I saw the size of the book I felt rather
daunted, but in the end I tackled it, and read through the whole
Bhagavata, regardless of whether I understood it or not. I had made
up my mind to read one chapter a day. I don’t remember which month
it was, but only that it had thirty-one days, and that by the end of
it the book had been finished. I had plucked up my courage to do it,
thinking that when the writer has girded himself up to write, why
should the reader accept defeat? I wonder how much I understood of
that great book at that first reading, young as I was ! But
Ekanath’s devotion and the repetitiousness of his style did make
some impression on me.
I closed the book and laid it down, marvelling that I had actually
crossed that great ocean of print, and with a feeling of
satisfaction that I had completed the task which I had set myself.
Years passed before I opened it again. Then I needed to look at the
eleventh chapter of the Bhagavata in order to compare it with the
Gita, and I read Ekanath’s book again. This time it gave me full
satisfaction, boundless joy. Every page was rich in spiritual
experience. I learned later that there is nothing in any Indian
language which treats the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavata in so
masterly a way. After that I would often dip into it here and there,
as is my custom.
Meanwhile I had read Saint Ekanath’s life-history. He captivated me,
especially because I so easily lost my temper, and he was just the
opposite, an ocean of tranquillity. The story of his life gave me
the medicine I needed, and was very good for me. As I studied the
Bhagavata, the secret of Ekanath’s life was revealed to me. The more
I reflected on it, the greater his stature became in my eyes. I feel
that Mahatma Gandhi is his counterpart in the present age, in this
and in many other ways.
I read the books of Saint Ramadas while I was still a boy. I was
quite crazy about him, and took him as my model. His writings were
so simple and straightforward that they introduced me to spiritual
literature in an easy, natural way. From that starting point I
followed on by easy gradual steps to my first acquaintance with
saint Jnanadev, and then of the Sanskrit Vedas.
I read Ramadas’ books when I was a mere boy, when my young mind
could grasp little of their meaning. But what I did understand left
an impression so deep that it has lasted to this day. Devotion,
detachment, discernment, many matters of this kind are to be found
in his teaching, but the thing that impressed me most was his
longing for friendly intercourse with his fellow-men.

Literature and Language

During my bhoodan pilgrimage it behoved me to study the literatures
of the various provincial languages of India so that I might be able
to touch the hearts of the people. It was a task which I undertook
out of pure love.
I am a student of world literature, and have an extraordinary
respect for men of letters and their writings. I studied Marathi
intensively, and in order to satisfy my spiritual needs I studied
Sanskrit along with it. Even then I was greatly interested in the
etymology and relationships of words, and in the question of how
words were formed and the course of their development. In tracing
the development of ideas it is necessary also to trace the history
of words, and that in its turn demands the study of a number of
languages. My main purpose, however, in learning the languages of
India, was to be able to touch the hearts of the people and win
their confidence.
I therefore made a thorough study of the spiritual literature of
each State I visited, from Assam to Kerala, and a good deal of it I
got by heart. I think I probably remember something like fifty
thousand verses. In addition, I have studied the ancient Arabic,
Persian, Ardha-magadhi11 and Pali languages, and also some Chinese.
At one time during my bhoodan pilgrimage a Japanese brother joined
us for three months, and from him I had an hour’s lesson in Japanese
every day. Then came a German girl, and with her help I learned some
German. Another foreign brother taught me Esperanto. Learning these
various languages helps one to become familiar with words, and I am
fully conscious of the power of words. But for the word to reveal
itself one must grasp its inner essence, and that cannot be done, in
my view, unless the word is savoured, turned over and over, and
thoroughly digested.

The Science of Ayurvedic Medicine

I have also studied books on Vaidyaka, the ayurvedic system of
medicine. I read my first book in 1923, when I went to jail at the
time of the Flag Satyagraha. A Vaidya, an Ayurvedic doctor from
Karnataka, was in jail with me, and with his help I read the book by
Vagbhata. The book is in Sanskrit, So I could understand it without
difficulty. Next, I read the treatise of Charaka. The book is
beautifully written in short sentences and it shows what
meticulously careful observations were made even in those ancient
times. The third book I read is named Sharangadhara. Although it is
attributed to Patanjali, it is not possible to say whether it was
actually written by him or by someone else.

The Science of Economics

I read Karl Marx’s great book Capital, the Communist ‘Bible’. While
I was in prison during the Individual Satyagraha movement in 1940, a
Communist friend said to me: ‘I understand that you have not yet
read any Communist literature; it’s well worth reading.’ ‘Then,’ I
res- ponded, ‘will you please read some of it to me while I am
spinning?’ So he chose what he wished and read it to me. I had in
fact already been able to read Marx’s Capital before I went to jail,
so I had no difficulty in understanding what he read. I used to
listen for an hour and a half every day, and we kept it up for some
months. Even though he read only selections, the constant repetition
of ideas made a strong impression on my mind. It is not surprising
that the minds of our young people, far from being bored by this
faulty repetitive style, are on the contrary charmed by it.
Besides Marx, I also read Tolstoy, Ruskin and other writers on the
subject.

Sharing Knowledge

People like me, who live in the freedom of joy, are in bondage to
nothing in this external world; but they do feel the bonds of love,
and they are eager to pass on to others, before they die, whatever
may be of public benefit in the knowledge they have gained. As old
age comes on and the prospect of death lies ahead they desire the
more strongly to make over this knowledge to society once for all;
when they have done so they feel free to depart to that real home
where they long to be.
When I think of this, I really look forward to the time when I shall
cast off this physical body and nestle in the cradle of the Lord.
Nevertheless, before I pass away, I also wish to make society a gift
of whatever knowledge I have gathered—whether it proves to be true
knowledge, or some kind of ignorance which I have mistaken for
knowledge.

Abhidheyam parama-samyam samanvayena

‘The goal is the supreme samya (equanimity12 in spirit and equality
in outward circumstances) attained by a linked chain of thought.’
I direct my thinking towards growth in mutual understanding, hoping
that in the end I may thus attain this goal. We need to accept a
progressive enlargement of understanding as the method of our
thinking, and to aim at equanimity as the result. I have called the
Gita the Samyayoga, the Yoga of equanimity, because the word samya,
equanimity, lies at the very basis of its teaching. The thing to be
attained is equanimity, the method is a progressive linking together
of more and more strands of thought. My own philosophical discourses
have been given from this perspective, and my philosophical writings
take Samyayoga as the fruit to be sought, and samanvaya, a
constantly enlarging linkage of ideas, as the method to be followed.
In 1923 I wrote four articles on the study of the Upanishads in the
monthly Maharashtra-Dharma13; these were published in book form as
‘Upanishadancha Abhyasa’. In my view the philosophy of the
Upanishads is most exalted. The Gita holds a mother’s place in my
heart, and rightly so; but I also know that the Upanishads are my
mother’s mother, and I revere them accordingly. I have studied and
meditated on them for many years in that spirit, and this book is a
kind of distillation of their essence. It is the first thing I
wrote; it is difficult to understand, but it has depth, and even now
I feel no need to make any great change in it. If it had been
written today it would have been in a simpler style, but there would
have been no change in the thought. This study of the Upanishads was
not consciously linked with the Lord Buddha, but nevertheless I
ended the book with a quotation from the Dhammapada.
In Sthitaprajna-Darshan (The Steadfast Wisdom) I did point out the
relationship between Buddhist and Vedic thought. In the winter of
1944 I was in Seoni jail, and the book originated in some lectures
which I gave to a group of people there on the Gita’s conception of
‘a man of steadfast wisdom’. These lectures were published, and the
book contains the interpretation of the subject which I had reached
after thirty years of reverent study and meditation.
Thus from 1923 to 1944 the Buddhists had never been far from my
thought, and up to 1960 I continued to reflect on the need to bring
together Buddhist philosophy and the Vedanta. When I use these
terms, ‘Buddhist philosophy’ and ‘Vedanta’, I mean to denote two
main streams of Indian thought. On the one hand, there are schools
of philosophy and spiritual practice which take no account of God;
on the other hand there are those who consider God’s help to be
essential. Buddhist philosophy relies on the Atma, the Self; Vedanta
calls for God’s grace. These two types of thought must be brought
together; only then can there be a satisfying philosophy, and only
then a satisfying way of life.
There are therefore no ‘isms’ in any of the books I have written.
Look at my Gita-Pravachan (Talks on the Gita); you will find no
‘isms’ there. The book deals with matters of everyday conduct, but
it neither ignores the basic spiritual thought nor gets involved in
any argument about it.
In ‘Talks on the Gita’ I had presented the Samyayoga of the Gita in
a popular style, and I had been thinking for a long time of doing
what I could to link it up in a chain of Sanskrit aphorisms, I felt
an urge to compose these sutras during the months which I spent
among the dense forests of Koraput district in the course of my
bhoodan pilgrimage in Orissa. Sutras can be found in Marathi in the
original version of ‘Talks on the Gita’ , but the Sanskrit sutras
convey a much wider meaning, and I find them useful for my own
thinking. From time to time, they are churned around in my mind.
Thought-provoking words from the Vedas, the Upanishads etc. can be
found in them. In Samya-sutra (Collection of these aphorisms on
equanimity) also, my aim has been to build up the interconnections
of thought.

The Essence of our Common Prayer

I have written some books also to help people to appreciate the
essence of the prayers we use. Throughout India, during the
independence movement, thousands of satyagrahis recited daily in
their evening prayer the verses of the Gita which describe the ‘man
of steadfast wisdom’. Even now these verses form part of the prayer
at a number of places, and we too recite them in our daily evening
prayer. I have written my own commentary on these verses in
Sthitaprajna-Darshan.
In the morning prayer we recite the Ishavasya Upanishad. I have
written about that in my Ishavasya Vritti, which I wrote at Bapu’s
behest. It was when I went to see Gandhiji in the Sassoon Hospital
in Pune.14 He then told me of his wish that I should write something
on the Ishavasya, and I agreed to do so; but it was not possible
just then to find the time, so intensive were the activities in
which I was then involved. Later, after the Harijan tour in
Travancore Gandhiji gave me orders again. ‘You may wait, if you
wish, for a chance to write something that will satisfy your own
mind, but you must give me something now, for my own use, even if it
is only a little note.’ So I wrote and gave him a short note
accordingly. This was not intended for publication, but while I was
in jail, some friends outside got it published, and a copy somehow
reached the jail. That alerted me, and I spent two months reflecting
on it and writing the short commentary which I named Ishavasya
Vritti. There are many places where it differs from earlier
commentaries, but nowhere does it contradict them. The text can
easily bear various interpretations. Moreover, if thought progresses
and grows, it is a fulfilment of the labours of the earlier
commentators. Where is the need to write, if one has nothing new to
say? The Ishavasya Upanishad contains in brief the whole discipline
required of a spiritual aspirant, and is therefore very valuable for
recollection at the beginning of each day.

Vedas: A Mass of Letters

On our pilgrimage we would start out singing the hymn from the
Samaveda which celebrates the seasons of the year, welcoming spring
and summer, rains and cold alike. That hymn was a favourite, but
when the heavens opened and the rain poured down we chose another,
‘May He shower on us from Heaven’, about the showers of Heavenly
blessing. In this way the Vedas gave us much joy.
Of all Indian literature, it is the Vedas, the Vedanta (Upanishads)
and the Gita which have had the greatest influence on me. If I were
compelled to name only a single book I would undoubtedly choose the
Gita, but I have studied the Vedas also for years. My mother died in
1918, and I started to study them on the very day on which she
passed away.
For practical knowledge we need to study many books, but for
spiritual benefit one book alone is sufficient. That one book should
be read again and again to extract all the nourishment it can
provide. I read and re-read the Vedas from 1918 to 1969. It is not
enough just to glance through them. They are very ancient, and one
needs years to penetrate into the meaning of each word used. I
studied them for fifty years, and got by heart between four and five
thousand verses. Out of these I selected 1319 verses which make up
the book Rigveda-Sar, The Essence of the Rigveda. The book is the
fruit of fifty years of study.
It has been said of the Vedas that they consist not of words, but of
separate letters of the alphabet. To group these letters into words
is in effect to write a commentary. A commentary is only a secondary
thing, the text—the letters—is primary. Translations are of no use
at all. How are you going to translate the word agni into English?
The English word ‘fire’ is also used to translate vahni, but agni
and vahni cannot be equated. The first words of the first hymn of
the Rigveda are: Agnimile purohitam; vahni will not do in that
context. Neither translation nor commentary constitute the Vedas.
The Veda means its samhita, the mass of letters. If I comment on it,
it becomes ‘my’ Veda; if I break it up into words, it is also ‘my’
Veda. So all I did was to publish a selection of some of the hymns I
had committed to memory. The Rigveda contains 10,558 hymns, of which
I chose about one-eighth (1319) for publication, so as to make
recitation easier.

In the Service of the Acharyas

I was attracted by Shankaracharya’s thought because I found no
narrow-mindedness in his attitude to the concept of spiritual
discipline. He does not let any form of spiritual discipline become
a burden; it is meant to liberate, not to constrain.
I owe a great debt to Shankaracharya, and the only way to pay it is
to free myself from the feeling that I ‘am’ this physical body. I
struggle on towards this goal, and I believe that by the grace of
God I shall succeed. Meanwhile I might also repay my debt by sharing
with others what I have received from him, and I therefore made a
selection of his poems, hymns of praise etc., under the title Guru-bodh.
This was published during my bhoodan tour in Kerala, while I was at
Kaladi, Shankaracharya’s birth place. There I laid it as my offering
at his feet.
I also made a selection of passages from Manusmriti. I had named my
‘essence’ of Shankaracharya’s teaching Guru-bodh, but I did not call
the new book Manu-bodh, I called it Manushasanam, The Edicts of
Manu. The two books differ. Shankaracharya’s purpose was to teach,
not to make laws, and teaching leaves both the teacher and the
taught their freedom—you may follow the teaching or not, as you
please. Manu’s words are edicts, they are commands. The Manusmriti
lays down the duty of a father, a son, a brother, a ruler, everyone.
In Valmiki’s Ramayana, when Rama is in doubt about what to do, he
says: ‘If I were to act in this way, what would Manu say?’ That
means that he held that one should act in accordance with the edicts
of Manu. Similarly in the Gita Lord Krishna says to Arjuna: ‘O
Arjuna, I am imparting to you what in the beginning I imparted to
the Sun; the Sun imparted it to Manu, and thus it became known’.
According to the Gita, Manu was the first in human society to follow
the yoga of action, and we are all his progeny. The very word manava,
a human being, means ‘the people of Manu’. I am saying all this to
explain why I called my book The Edicts of Manu.
What Manu says is like medicine—it is a good thing even when it
tastes bitter. His book deals with sociology, but the times in which
he wrote were different from the present ones, and therefore what he
says cannot all be taken literally today. Some of it in fact is
completely off the mark, so that one must exercise much
discrimination in choosing what is appropriate. To give you an
example: as a boy I was much influenced by Manu’s commands, and I
stopped wearing shoes because he decreed that students should go
without them. Going barefoot in the fierce heat of Baroda had a bad
effect on my eyes. In Manu’s time students probably lived in Ashrams
where there was no need for shoes. So I omitted that verse from my
selections; that is what I mean by exercising discrimination.
My reverence for Manu is a matter of faith, and I regard that as
very important. It is true that one should think for oneself and use
one’s own discretion, but this discretion also needs a foundation. I
do not regret that my eyes suffered because I obeyed Manu Maharaj’s
commands. On the contrary it did me good, because it strengthened my
convictions.
Many people now-a-days find Manu very irritating, and with good
reason, for Manusmriti is full of mutually contradictory ideas. I do
not think that Manu himself was the author of all of them; there
must have been many later interpolations of various kinds. The
statements which make people angry are those which endorse social
inequalities and if these are removed Manu is not discredited, for
what he stood for was not inequality but good order. When Manu deals
with mukti, liberation, he points out that one who draws near to
God, and gains that highest knowledge, knowledge of the Supreme,
attains to equality with all. That shows that Manu’s social order
was designed to lead towards equality; the ideas of inequality which
have found their way into Manusmriti should never have been
admitted, and have done harm to the country15. I have therefore left
them out, and chosen only those parts which are essential to an
understanding of Manu’s basic teaching.

In the Service of Mutual Goodwill

Science has made the world smaller, and it tends to bring all human
beings closer to one another. That being so, how can things work
smoothly if human society remains divided, and each group regards
itself as the highest and looks down on all the rest? We need to
understand one another, to know one another as we really are.
My book of selections from the Holy Koran, Kuran-Sar (The Essence of
the Koran), is a little effort to promote this understanding. With
the same purpose I made a new arrangement of Dhammapada, and put my
thoughts on the Gita before the public in Gita-Pravachan (Talks on
the Gita). The same purpose also inspired the publication of
Christa-Dharma-Sar (The Essence of the Christian Teachings)
consisting of selections from the New Testament. The aim of my
bhoodan pilgrimage, year after year, was this—to bring people
together in heart-unity; indeed, my whole life’s work has been
inspired by this same purpose.
I had known the Dhammapada from boyhood, and had studied it in
detail: its verses had arranged themselves in my mind in a
systematic order, different from the arrangement usually adopted
today, by which it is presented as a series of well-worded but
disconnected maxims, whereby its all-embracing vision is somewhat
obscured. I had felt for a long time that I should place the
Dhammapada before the public in the order in which it had fixed
itself in my own mind. It was a bold thing to do, but bold as it was
I did it in great humility. It was published as Dhammapada
Navasamhita, ‘a new arrangement of the Dhammapada’.
I have had many satisfactions in the course of my life. The latest,
and probably the most satisfying of them all, is the Samanasuttam.
I had said a number of times to my Jain friends that they should
have a book about their religion comparable to the Gita which gives
the essence of the Vedic religion in seven hundred verses, or to the
Dhammapada of the Buddhists, thanks to which the Buddhist religion
is known twenty-five hundred years after its birth. For the Jains
this was difficult, they have many sects and many books, but no one
book which holds among them a position like that of the Bible or the
Koran. I suggested again and again that their learned munis should
come together for consultation and discussion, in order to bring out
the best possible book on the essence of Jainism. At last Varniji, a
scholar in Jain philosophy, was attracted by what I was saying. He
prepared a book on the essence of Jainism, a thousand copies of
which were printed and sent to scholars, both Jains and others. In
accordance with suggestions made by these scholars some of the
verses originally chosen were deleted, and others added. This
revised book was published as Jinnadhammam. I then urged that a
general assembly should be held to discuss it. The same was held
wherein some three hundred munis, acharyas and other scholars took
part. There ensued a series of discussions as a result of which both
the name and the form of the book were changed. In the end, with
unanimous approval, it was published as Shramanasuktam, which in
Ardhamagadhi becomes Samanasuttam. This was a big thing, something
which had not been achieved during the past fifteen hundred years or
so. Though I was instrumental in getting it done, I am sure that it
was possible only by the grace of Lord Mahavir.
During my bhoodan journeys in Orissa I got an opportunity to study
the Bhagavata of Jagannatha Das, one of the great devotees. I chose
the eleventh chapter for study, and, in the course of our walk we
would all stop for half an hour or more, and sit down in some field
or quiet place to study it together. I would compare it with the
original in Sanskrit, and with Ekanath’s Marathi Bhagavata, along
with the commentary of Shridhar. Bhagavata-Dharma-Sar was the result
of this study.
At the beginning of our journey into Kashmir we studied Japuji
together for a few days. Four years later the talks which I gave
then were collected and published as Japuji. This book is intended
not only for the Sikhs but for all humanity, and my commentary is
written from that universal standpoint. Guru Nanak ought not to be
identified with any one religious sect. He travelled the whole of
northern India from the banks of the Ganga and the Yamuna to
Bhuvaneshwar and Jagannath Puri. ‘The main problem,’ he said, ‘is
how we may tear down the veil of falsehood and reach Truth.
Meditation and reflection benefit only the truthful. And the way to
become truthful is to follow the path prescribed by the Lord, to
obey His orders, to follow His instructions.’
That is Guru Nanak’s teaching. His whole spiritual discipline can be
summed up in two words: nirbhau, without fear, and nirvairu, without
enmity. In these two words lies the solution of the problems facing
humanity today. For the purpose of our work I add another word,
nishpaksha, without partisanship. The Japuji itself points to this
quality when it says that ‘if a man gives thought to it, he would
not tread the sectarian path’.
I agreed to the publication of Japuji, hoping that it would provide
good material for the Shanti-sena to study.

The Gifts of the Saints

The chief fruit of my pilgrimage was bhoodan-gramdan, but there were
many lesser fruits also. Whatever studies I undertook during that
time were intended not for my own benefit but for sharing with
others. One of these lesser fruits was the book of selections from
the Namaghosha of Shri Madhavadeva, the great saint of Assam. From
the point of view of my pilgrimage it may be called a ‘lesser’
fruit, but it is no small thing in its usefulness to the public, for
it can contribute to heart-unity among the peoples of India.
I have made very little study of Assamese spiritual writings, but
Namaghosha attracted me very much. In Assamese literature it is
probably second to none, and deserves a place of honour among
writings in all Indian languages. Madhavadeva has made the
remembrance of the name of God the central focus, and around that he
has woven many suggestive references to the real values of life. I
read the book over and over again, and many of its verses became
fixed in my memory. It gave me the same kind of pleasure as the
company of a friend. I made selections for my own use, and later it
was decided to publish this Namaghosha-Sar for the use of aspirants
to the spiritual life.
After twelve years of bhoodan pilgrimage I arrived in Raipur for the
Sarvodaya Conference, which I had not been able to attend for the
past two or three years. When the Raipur meeting resolved to serve
the trinity of sulabha gramdan, village-oriented khadi, and
Shanti-sena, there came into my mind a line in Vinayapatrika about
another trinity:
‘To Rama, Lakshmana and Sita I bow,
Who to Tulsi their heavenly friendliness show.’
I became totally absorbed in that verse, and repeated it inwardly as
I travelled towards Sevagram, where I was to make public the new
direction which khadi was to take. On my way there I passed through
the little village of Darchura. The children of the primary school
gave me a copy of Vinayapatrika, in which they had written, ‘With
love to Vinobaji’. The gift brought me unbounded pleasure, for
school children now-a-days tend to be somewhat lacking in discipline
and reverence, so that to be given a copy of Vinayapatrika by school
children seemed to me a unique and holy thing, and I began to study
the book for the third time. For the next ten months I was lost in
that ocean of the nectar of love, and was moved to publish an
abridged edition of the book for my fellow-workers. This shortened
version is called Vinayanjali.
Tukaram has helped me a great deal in self-exam- ination and
self-purification. I used to listen to my mother singing his songs
in her sweet voice, and even today the memory brings tears to my
eyes. I planned to choose about a hundred of those abhangas16
(devotional songs) which most appealed to me, and put them before
the readers of Maharashtra-Dharma,17 along with a brief commentary.
Each issue of this weekly paper carried one abhanga, but the project
could not be completed. Whatever did appear was collected in book
form as ‘Santancha Prasad’. Later on I also selected some of
Tukaram’s devotional hymns and published them as ‘Tukaramanchi
Bhajane’.
I had read the Bhagavata of Saint Ekanath early in life. Later on I
turned to his abhangas in order to discover his individual
experience, and read the Gatha, the volume of his songs. All my
reading in religion and philosophy has been done for my own
satisfaction, to help me in my own thinking. For this purpose, as
the years passed, I gradually built up my own personal collection of
gems of experience from Ekanath’s Gatha, and this was published for
the first time while I was in jail in 1940. When the time came for a
second edition I revised it very thoroughly, discarding some
abhangas and adding others, and changing the arrangement a little.
Now I feel satisfied both with the material selected and with the
presentation.
Such volumes of selections are sometimes made in order to awaken the
readers’ interest and induce them to read the original works in
full. My object is exactly the opposite of this. My purpose is to
enable a spiritual seeker to find all that he needs by assimilating
the selected passages, so that he has no need to wade through the
original great tomes, and is saved all the hard labour which I had
to undergo. My book of Ekanath’s abhangas, selection though it is,
is a complete whole, and I feel sure that Saint Ekanath himself
would be satisfied with it !
Saint Namadev was the great ‘publicist’ of Maharashtra ! He made the
name ‘Vitthal’ famous all over India. He even wrote poems in the
Punjabi language, some of which have been included in the
Granthasaheb of the Sikhs. He was an extremely prolific and
versatile poet, and no definitive Gatha or collection of his work is
therefore available. The work of selection was consequently very
laborious. Then while I was in jail I heard that the Gatha from
which I had made my selection had been lost, and I had to do all the
work again from another copy. Then the lost book turned up again,
which was fortunate, for I could then compare my two versions. The
fruit of all this labour is a choice collection of Saint Namadev’s
devotional songs, sweet as nectar as they are. The words are filled
to the brim with a selfless love of God, and will surely help
spiritual seekers on the path to inward purity.
Saint Ramadas has written a lot, but his two greatest books are
Dasabodha and ‘Manache Shloka’. I know the ‘Manache Shloka’ by
heart. I have read the Dasabodha times without number, and have
chosen for my own use what appeared to me to be the essence of it; I
call it Bodhabindu. ‘Manache Shloka’ is a work of divine
inspiration. The volume of Ramadas’ collected abhangas has been
continually before me, and it is natural that a number of them
should have become fixed in my memory. They have all been published
in book form as ‘Ramdasanchi Bhajane’, Hymns of Ramadas.
More of my own thought has been poured into my books ‘Jnanadevanchi
Bhajane’ (Hymns of Jnanadev) and the Chintanika (Reflections) on it,
than into any other of my books except Gitai and Gitai-Kosh. I
cannot make a better selection of Jnanadev’s devotional songs, and
as for the Chintanika, it has a sweetness which can never grow
stale.18
The Chintanika does not treat every hymn in the same way. Sometimes
there is an extensive commentary, sometimes a brief note on the
essence, sometimes a simple translation, sometimes a piece of
free-ranging discursive thought. I, whose reflections these are,
have put down whatever I felt at the time, and I would like every
reader to interpret the book for himself in the way that will best
purify his own life. The Chintanika only suggests what direction to
take. It is a work based on my own view of the successive steps of
sadhana, the spiritual quest or discipline. Whether or not it would
please Saint Jnanadev himself depends on how far I have succeeded in
becoming one in spirit with him. But I do not trouble myself about
that. I do know this much that I have identified with Jnanadev more
closely than with any other man.

Discharging a Debt to the Word

The pattern of my life has been one of experiment born of reflection
and of reflection born of experiment. I call this nididhyasa, a
state of concentrated contemplation in which ideas flash into the
mind like living sparks. I do not usually feel disposed to write
them down, but at one time when I was in a particular state of mind
I did feel the urge to record them—not all of them, only some of the
ideas that occurred to me. They are to be found in Vichar-pothi,
(Random Reflections). Fortunately this urge did not last long; a few
days later it faded away.
I had no thought of publishing Vichar-pothi, but some inquisitive
persons began to make copies of it, and about one hundred and fifty
such copies came into existence during the next twelve years. But
now-a-days bad handwriting and careless mistakes have become all too
common, and in addition not all the copies were made direct from the
original. As a result, many errors crept in, and some sentences were
rendered completely meaningless. It therefore became necessary to
publish an authentic version.
These thoughts are not like apophthegms. An apoph- thegm has a form,
but these are rather formless. Nor can they be called aphorisms,
since an aphorism is bound by logic, while these are free. What are
they then? I call them ‘mutterings’. They certainly owe much to the
old scriptures, but they are nevertheless my own independent ideas.
If I may be forgiven for using a phrase of Jnanadev they are an
attempt to discharge my debt to language, to the Word.

My Greatest Service

‘Vinya,’ my mother had said, ‘why don’t you translate the Gita
yourself, into simple Marathi verse? You can surely do it !’ It was
my mother’s faith in me which led to my writing the Gitai. As the
Gita is written in Sanskrit, the language barrier prevents most of
our Marathi people from studying it in depth and pondering over its
teaching. I had wanted for a long time to make a Marathi rendering,
but it was not until 1930 that conditions were favourable, and the
necessary mental concentration was possible.
When I was studying the meaning of the Gita, it had taken me several
years to absorb the fifth chapter. I consider that chapter to be the
key to the whole book, and the key to that chapter is in the
eighteenth verse of the fourth chapter: ‘inaction in action, and
action in inaction’. The meaning of those words, as it revealed
itself to me, casts its shadow over the whole of my Talks on the
Gita.
I began writing the Gitai at five o’ clock in the morning on October
7, 1930, after morning prayer. I started on that fifth chapter, for:

In music, the fifth note of the scale,
In colour, the fifth tint of the rainbow,
So, in the Gita, is the fifth of the chapters
worthy of reverence from seekers of the Path.

The task of writing was completed on February 6, 1931.
From my point of view, however, the task did not end with the
writing; the writing must satisfy a practical test. The test I chose
was to teach my Gitai to a class of little girls in the Ashram.
Wherever they found the language difficult, I changed it. Then I
asked some friends for their suggestions, and considered what they
said. The final version for publication was prepared in 1932 in
Dhulia jail, and I was still in the jail when the first edition was
published.
My book Gita-Pravachan (Talks on the Gita) was born during that same
period in jail. As I talked, my words were taken down by Sane
Guruji’s auspicious hand. As God willed, these talks have now been
translated into nearly all the languages of India, and are of
service to the people throughout the country. The Bhagvad-Gita was
told on the battlefield; and that is why it has a different lustre,
no other treatise can match her. The Lord Himself told the Gita
again, which is known as Anugita. But it is not even a pale shadow
of the original. My writings and talks on the Gita elsewhere would
not have the magic touch that these ‘Talks’ have. These were
delivered in jail, which for us was a battlefield, before the
soldiers in the freedom struggle. The atmosphere in the jail at that
time was charged with a rare sacredness.
The Talks put the essence of the Gita into simple language and so
bring it within the reach of the common man. However, there was
still a need of additional aid for those who wished to make a
verse-by-verse study, and there was also a demand for a dictionary
to explain words occurring in the Gitai. I took no notice of these
demands, however, as I knew that I should have no time for the work.
Moreover, a dictionary of the Gitai would need to be based on a
finalised version of the text. My thoughts were already moving in
this direction, and every new edition of the Gitai contained some
revision of the text. Later, the Individual Satyagraha and Quit
India movement gave me a whole five years of free time (in jail),
during which I even observed silence for a few months. At that time
I was able to complete the revision of the Gitai text.
After I was released, my younger brother Shivaji and I gave seven
months, in 1945-46, to working together at the dictionary, and in
this way the whole Gitai-Kosh came to be completed. When it was
finished, I simply laid it aside, as it is my natural instinct to
do. People were pressing me to publish it immediately, but I felt
that a few years ought to pass before I did so. The understanding
becomes deeper with the time. So we waited, and then we both went
through the whole Kosh again; the revision took us five months.
There is one respect in which the Kosh is just the opposite of the
Gitai. In the Gitai I had put aside my own individuality, whereas
the Kosh is full of it; in other words, it reflects my own way of
thinking about the Gita. I would never say, however, that everyone
should think as I do. I myself am not bound to my own point of
view—I might think differently tomorrow ! I feel no need now to
change a word in the text of the Gitai, but the Kosh is concerned
with meaning and thoughts about meaning can change for the better.
When we revised the Kosh which we had written four years earlier it
became a new book. But a line has to be drawn somewhere in this
process, and at that time we did draw a line and allow the book to
be published.
I have noticed that scholars find the Kosh helpful, but ordinary
readers have neither the time nor the skill to use it for critical
study of meanings. For them, therefore, I thought it would be good
to print a commentary on each verse immediately below the verse
itself. This plan has been carried out in the Gitai-Chintanika,
which contains most of the important notes found in the Kosh, and a
few new ones in addition. I also had a notebook in which I had from
time to time jotted down comments on certain verses as they occurred
to me, and some of this material too has been included. One may say,
therefore, that the Gitai-Chintanika reflects my thought as it has
developed up to the present.
‘Talks on the Gita’, ‘The Steadfast Wisdom’ and the
Gitai-Chintanika together present the Gita from the standpoint of
Samyayoga, so far as I have understood it. It may be that in course
of time my other services to the world will be forgotten, but I
believe that the Gitai and the Gita-Pravachan (Talks on the Gita)
will not be forgotten, they will continue to give service. I say
this because when I wrote the Gitai, and when I gave the Talks on
the Gita, I did so in a state of samadhi, in that state of
consciousness which transcends the world.

‘There is Nothing of Vinya in it’19

None of the books I have written, are really mine. I am merely a
servant of my Lord.
I have received something from the Masters, and that I distribute.
The poet says: ‘Even though I should swim like a fish in Thy vast
and boundless ocean of knowledge, my thirsting mind could never be
satisfied.’ I am simply sharing with others some part of the wealth
of thought I have received. I am just a retail trader, selling the
goods I get from the big wholesale dealers.
‘The message is that of the Saints. There is nothing of Vinya in
it.’